The problem

The client has suffered before.  Armies of consultants arrive on site, consume large amounts of paper & money and then leave when the system (just about) goes live.  The client is stuck with long term maintenance costs and a system that is expensive to change and hard to understand.

This time they vowed it would be different.  They sought a trusted partner to develop a long-term automated regression capability; one that would deliver immediate benefits but would still be driving down the cost of change 5-10 years from now.

Oh, and the project was behind schedule so all this was to be done without distracting core project resources.

The solution

The project has already been running for a year when Trinitatum arrive on site.

Within weeks, the Trinitatum lead has performed a full system review (including documentation, source code and ad hoc analysis) and identified an approach and set of test principles that were reviewed and accepted by the programme management.

At the end of month one, the first automated test scenario is running and reviewed by business analysts and domain experts.

In month two, tests are running overnight and a project dashboard is available every morning.

In month three 85% of defects are found by Trinitatum’s regression test team.

In month four the functional tests are leveraged to provide automated performance and concurrency tests.

In months five and six, a full set of P&L, Exposure and Attribution tests are developed from first principles. 

Tests continue to run every night.  Developers receive targeted defect reports, showing precisely what was broken “yesterday”.  Developers become more productive and average time to fix comes down.

In months seven and eight test coverage grows (and is measured objectively) and is extended to include automated security testing.  The daily project dashboard proves invaluable during final go-live preparation.

Nine months after arriving on site, and over two years after the project started, a complex LNG trading system is live.  In the first four post go-live releases, the regression tests catch “critical” regression issues before they are released. 

With confidence in the regression test capability, releases are planned more frequently and the functional payload is increased.

The long term support of a complex ETRM is entrusted to a junior Trinitatum tester... all made possible by the support of a comprehensive regression test pack.